Global Warmers Want Just One Thing — Control

The Global Warming Racket: Nice Work If You Can Get It

384 Comments

BY KERRY JACKSON

10/06/2015

The global warming alarmist community has for years smeared skeptics by claiming that they are funded by Big Oil. Is that true? Did the oil companies buy allies?

Unlikely. Many of us — probably all of us — came by our doubts that man is warming the planet through his carbon dioxide emissions on our own. All that is required is a little bit of reading and some independent thinking. What tends to happen in the professional ranks is that scientists who have uncertainties about the climate change story received research funding from corporations only after they had taken their position, which they arrived at honestly through their studies.

There is another side of this that is rarely heard, though, and that's the story of who's funding the alarmists. In many cases, the government is paying for the research that concludes we are overheating the planet. It's the outcome that politicians and bureaucrats want, so they keep funding more of the same. It's been said, quite credibly, "The dirty secret is that global warming is driven more by the search for funding than the search for scientific truth." And it was, in fact, the Delaware state climatologist who said, "There's a lot more money to be made by saying the world is coming to an end than to say that this is a bunch of hooey."

So woe unto the scientists who don't hold what is truly the Democratic Party line. No research grants for them.

Let's track back now a few weeks and dig up the story about the group of academics who have asked the White House to prosecute skeptical organizations and corporations under federal RICO statutes, laws intended to cut down on racketeering enterprises run by organized crime. Who are these people who would criminalize free academic thought? Well, one happens to be Jagadish Shukla, a professor at George Mason University who, according to one lawmaker, "has reportedly received $63 million from taxpayers since 2001" to fund his own nonprofit, the Institute of Global Environment and Society.

Why is this OK? Why is it acceptable for taxpayers' money to be used to fund the work of a man who wants those who believe differently from him to be prosecuted as criminals?

No — this is not OK. Taxpayers should not have to fund a witch hunt as well as the outside work of the chief witch hunter. (The Competitive Enterprise Institute calls Shukla the "lead signer" of the letter asking the president to prosecute.)

In his own letter, Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, told Shukla that his non-profit "appears to be almost fully funded by taxpayer money while simultaneously participating in partisan political activity by requesting a RICO investigation of companies and organizations that disagree with the Obama administration on climate change."

Quite clearly, Shukla has his own racket enterprise going. And it sounds like it could use a little investigating. Could be there's another alarmist scandal waiting to be uncovered.

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Walter Williams: Global Warmers Want Just One Thing — Control

16 Comments

BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS

10/06/2015

 

I receive loads of mail in response to my weekly nationally syndicated column. Some recent mail has been quite disturbing. Here's a sample:

"Given your support of freedom on a great many issues, I wish to bring to your attention the following George Mason University staff who have formally called on the president to use RICO statutes to punish organizations and individuals who dispute the 'consensus' of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

The writer goes on to say, "I am appalled that anyone associated with George Mason would so misuse the power of the federal government." The writer names 20 signatories, six of whom are GMU faculty members.

This letter writer's problem, like that of many others, is a misperception of George Mason University, where I am an economics professor.

We have a distinguished economics department that can boast of having had two homegrown Nobel Prize winners on our faculty. Plus, we have a worldwide reputation as a free-market economics department.

The university can also boast of a distinguished law school with professors who, in contrast with many other law schools, have respect for the United States Constitution and the rule of law. We can boast of the excellent Law & Economics Center, too.

With this kind of intellectual firepower at George Mason University, most people assume that it is, like its namesake, a libertarian or free-market university. Little could be further from the truth. My university, at which I've toiled for 35 years, has a political makeup like that of most other universities — middle of the road to liberal/progressive.

What distinguishes my liberal/progressive colleagues is that they are courteous and civilized, unlike many of those at universities such as the University of Massachusetts and the University of California, Berkeley.

So I investigated this call for the use of RICO, or the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. It turns out that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., has called for the criminal investigation of people and organizations who are seen as global warming deniers.

The investigation would include lawsuits against the coal and oil industries, certain think tanks and other organizations that question the global warming religion.

By the way, so that Whitehouse and his gang don't appear silly, they've changed their concern from global warming to climate change. That's stupid in and of itself, for when has the climate not been changing, even before mankind arrived?

It turns out that George Mason University meteorologist Jagadish Shukla is the lead signatory of the letter sent to the president and attorney general asking them to use RICO laws to prosecute "corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change."

This GMU professor calling for the prosecution of climate skeptics has been recently revealed as a "climate profiteer." From 2012 to 2014, this leader of the RICO 20 climate scientists paid himself and his wife $1.5 million from government climate grants for part-time work.

The effort to suppress global warming dissidents is not new. Grist Magazine writer David Roberts said: "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg."

Professor Richard Parncutt has called for the execution of prominent "GW deniers." Climate Progress editor Joe Romm called for deniers to be strangled in their beds. James Hansen, who has headed NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has likewise called for trials of global warming deniers.

The global warming agenda is a desperate effort to gain greater control over our lives. Political commentator Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) explained, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

That's the political goal of the global warmers.

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